Volume 3, Number 4, 273-293, DOI: 10.1007/s10270-004-0054-1

Supporting the reconciliation of models of object behaviour

George Spanoudakis and Hyoseob Kim

From the issue entitled "Special section on OOIS 01Special section on OOIS 01"

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Abstract

This paper presents Reconciliation+, a method which identifies overlaps between models of software systems behaviour expressed as UML object interaction diagrams (i.e., sequence and/or collaboration diagrams), checks whether the overlapping elements of these models satisfy specific consistency rules and, in cases where they violate these rules, guides software designers in handling the detected inconsistencies. The method detects overlaps between object interaction diagrams by using a probabilistic message matching algorithm that has been developed for this purpose. The guidance to software designers on when to check for inconsistencies and how to deal with them is delivered by enacting a built-in process model that specifies the consistency rules that can be checked against overlapping models and different ways of handling violations of these rules. Reconciliation+ is supported by a toolkit. It has also been evaluated in a case study. This case study has produced positive results which are discussed in the paper.

Keywords  Consistency management - Software design models - Object interaction diagrams

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